Liverpool won the Premier League last season and then underwent major surgery throughout the summer transfer window.
Perhaps you could frame the Reds as a team in transition. This could be asserted for the 2024/25 campaign, when Liverpool pranced their way through the term and, yes, won the league title in Arne Slot’s first year at the helm.
Maybe it could also be argued that this is a transitional year for Liverpool. After all, many ins and outs occurred down Anfield Road this summer.
Regardless of which side of the fence you stand on, none can argue that Slot’s Liverpool are not title contenders once again, having won all five of their opening Premier League fixtures to establish a five-point lead at the summit. It took them until November to achieve that last year.
It is early days, of course, but the Merseysiders are shaping into quite the force, having signed Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz and many more.
However, they are hardly impregnable, with Liverpool’s defensive issues made worse by the ACL injury sustained by Giovanni Leoni against Southampton on Tuesday evening in the Carabao Cup.
How Leoni's injury affects Liverpool
Leoni must be gutted. Impressive on his Liverpool debut after leaving Parma in the summer, the 18-year-old will now recover across his first campaign in England, unlikely to be match fit until the business end.
He had looked calm and assured and confident on the ball. Sadly, this is a significant setback for one so young. It’s about now that sporting director Richard Hughes might lament Crystal Palace’s failure to sign a Guehi replacement at the end of the transfer window, thus ending a move that looked all but complete and a summer in the making.
Such is football, but there’s no question the Premier League champions are now one Virgil van Dijk injury away from alarm bells to start ringing, with a four-front charge for silverware currently underway.
Guehi, too, may be frustrated at how things have panned out, with his chances of regular football at Liverpool almost certain had he indeed finalised that last-minute move.
Hughes and Slot may also be tacitly frustrated that they sold Jarell Quansah to Bayer Leverkusen for £35m, with the hierarchy unable to promise the homegrown talent regularity of minutes for the club.
But then there will also be much confidence in Liverpool’s capacity to pull through. The backline has been refashioned over the past few months.
However, Quansah’s isn’t the only signature that may have left with an air of ruefulness. In fact, far more regret could be attributed to the mood when Trent Alexander-Arnold left for Real Madrid in June.
Alexander-Arnold's value after leaving
Liverpool were hamstrung. Noise coming from the concerning contract situations of Van Dijk, Mohamed Salah and Alexander-Arnold dominated the 2024/25 campaign, Slot’s first at the helm.
It’s small wonder that many felt the Reds would fall apart following Jurgen Klopp’s departure, with the ‘big three’ all slated to follow him out the gates.
That wasn’t the case. The skipper and the attacking talisman both renewed their Liverpool vows, but Alexander-Arnold, 26, left for pastures new and is now a member of Xabi Alonso’s Real Madrid team.
Premier League
257
18 (67)
Champions League
60
2 (13)
FA Cup
13
1 (3)
Carabao Cup
10
0 (6)
Europa League
5
0 (2)
Club World Cup
2
0 (1)
CL Qualifying
2
0 (1)
Community Shield
2
1 (0)
UEFA Super Cup
1
0 (0)
Hailed as a “generational” talent by content creator Asim Mahmood, Trent’s range of passing and his vision and inventions on the ball have
He might not be the answer to Liverpool’s central defensive issues right now, but it’s an underpinning of the upheaval that has beset Slot’s backline in recent months.
Having refused FSG’s offers, the England international was set to sign for Real Madrid on a free transfer before Florentino Perez decided to bring him over for the Club World Cup, paying the English outfit an £8m fee to release him from his contract several weeks early.
This is some distance below the figure Liverpool recouped from Quansah’s sale, and does at least highlight the club’s expertise at the negotiating table, spending heavily this summer but banking a pretty penny too.
Alas, what’s done is done, but Alexander-Arnold is one of the world’s best, even if he is struggling to click from the off with Los Blancos, in and out of the starting line-up before a cruel injury that has ruled him out of action for the foreseeable.
For Liverpool to have got anything from a player imminently out of contract is a testament to Hughes’ prowess behind the desk, but, as Transfermarkt record it, his market value has already shot back up to £66m, which stands taller than the £35m figure the Reds were willing to pay for Guehi.
Moreover, when Alexander-Arnold brings it all together in Spain – and he will – this value will only skyrocket further.
In spite of the signing of Frimpong, the continued development of Conor Bradley and Dominik Szoboszlai’s interesting rebrand into a right-back, when called upon, none of them is Trent.
He was truly one-of-a-kind, and the most painful part of all is that all of a red persuasion across Merseyside and beyond felt that he was on the pathway to immortality at Liverpool, sure to replace Van Dijk as club captain and then take his seat, one day, on a plinth beside Steven Gerrard.
“He’s been a superstar,” Alan Shearer said, acknowledging the Three Lions man at the end of his Premier League career.
Alexander-Arnold must always be treasured for his contribution toward a sustained period of success, but he sadly joins a different category now, and it’s one the fans will look back at regretfully for many years.